| Case File | |
| Location: | Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia |
| Project: | Gold mine, processing facilities and related infrastructure |
| Companies: | Bea Mountain Mining Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Avesoro Resources Inc., which is ultimately owned by MNG Group of Turkey |
| Key concerns: |
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| Community goals: | Full implementation of all agreements already signed with the company
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| Key investors and buyers: | Three European development banks – DEG (German), Proparco (French) and FMO (Dutch) were linked to the Liberian mine through investments in FirstRand Bank, a South African commercial bank which financed the project, along with Nedbank. The South African government’s export credit agency, ECIC, guaranteed the loan. The International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, had previously investment in the project, but pulled out after an accident that spilled cyanide and arsenic into a river. Early company disclosures revealed that gold from the New Liberty mine was being sold to the MKS PAMP refinery in Switzerland, a member of the London Bullion Market’s Good Delivery List. Major consumer brands, including Alphabet, Apple, Disney, Starbucks and others disclosed that they sourced gold from this refinery in their conflict minerals reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. |
| Our partners: | Liberian NGOs |
| Outcomes: | Two communities participated in the mediation process with the company. Community representatives agreed that the biggest outcome of the mediation was a significantly improved relationship with Bea Mountain Mining Corporation, including agreed monthly meetings with company representatives in both communities. The company agreed to construct a water tower to ensure that the community has adequate access to safe and sustainable drinking water. They also agreed to repair a road that community members depended on to access a healthcare clinic, and assured communities that no underground activities are taking place underneath their villages or anywhere outside the closed company premises. |
With infrastructure, social services and the economy decimated by a protracted civil war, Liberia has sought to attract foreign investment as part of its effort to rebuild. The New Liberty gold mine promised good jobs, improved infrastructure, and various other social benefits to communities in a remote forest region of Liberia. However, community leaders say that the project displaced them from their homes and farms, polluted their water, and failed to provide promised benefits.
The mine is operated by Bea Mountain Mining Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of privately held Avesoro Resources Inc. Avesoro Resources is ultimately owned by the MNG Group of Turkey, which is controlled by the billionaire Günal family. Bea Mountain Mining Corporation first signed a Mining Development Agreement with the Liberian government in 2001, giving it a mining license covering a 457 km2 area in western Liberia. The mining license area contains a series of gold deposits, of which the New Liberty Gold Mine was the first to be developed.
The original project included an open pit mine, a processing plant, a tailings storage facility and a waste rock dump, as well as related infrastructure. Construction began in 2014, and full commercial production began in 2016. The company then continued to expand the project by developing the Ndablama satellite deposit and other deposits in the area.
Thought they live next door to Liberia’s first and largest commercial gold mine, many community members report that they are worse off than before development of the mine began. Dozens of small towns and villages have been affected by the mining operations.
As farmers and artisanal miners, community survival previously relied on access to land and natural resources. They ate primarily what they could grow, hunt, and fish, and supplemented their farming income with small-scale mining. Affected communities suffered from restrictions on land use and loss of access to agricultural lands and forests they used for hunting, leading to food insecurity and loss of livelihoods. Artisanal miners and those who provided goods and services to the miners were negatively impacted as well, because the company’s mining license permitted it to restrict this type of small-scale mining, and these important economic opportunities disappeared.
Additionally, around 2,000 people were forcibly resettled, losing their homes and farmland to make way for the mine’s open pit. Some community members reported being pressured to sign agreements that moved them into temporary, inadequate housing in 2014, while the company stopped working on construction of their permanent homes, leaving them unfinished for years.
The project has also been beset by design flaws and dangerous accidents. Between December 2015 and June 2016, the mine’s tailings storage facility periodically released harmful chemicals, including cyanide and arsenic, because of a defect in the processing plant. The processing plant caused at least one significant cyanide spill in March 2016, which eventually prompted the company to temporarily suspend operations of the plant. Nearby communities reported mass fish deaths and serious skin rashes, and they feared other health risks from their exposure to the polluted water.
Community members struggled to hold the company accountable. At least one protest to try to secure promised benefits resulted in police violence, with community members beaten, arrested and detained, and later blacklisted for employment. Some residents were allegedly injured by police and never received proper medical care.
Liberian NGOs that had been working with the community since 2015 turned to Inclusive Development International to help investigate the project’s financial backers and gold off-takers. Through this research, we identified that the German development bank DEG, the French development bank Proparco, and the Dutch development bank FMO, were all linked to the project through their investments in South Africa’s FirstRand Bank. This enabled communities to file a groundbreaking complaint to the development banks’ accountability mechanism, opening the door to a formal mediation process with the company.
In February 2021, Inclusive Development International, along with Liberian and European partner organizations, assisted community leaders in five affected towns to file a formal complaint against three European development banks–DEG, Proparco and FMO–for their links to the New Liberty project through investments in FirstRand Bank.
Our research showed that DEG, Proparco and FMO had been lending money to FirstRand Bank of South Africa for years. FirstRand participated in project loans of $110 million to develop New Liberty while it was a client of the development banks. The development banks “ring-fenced” their loans to FirstRand, restricting their use to particular types of projects. However, all three development banks took a portfolio-wide approach to their financial intermediary lending. This approach, recognizing that money is fungible, requires banks like FirstRand to apply stringent social and environmental standards to all of their high-risk clients, no matter their size or location and regardless of any ring fences.
The complaint, filed with the development banks’ Independent Complaints Mechanism (ICM), described the harm experienced by each of the five communities in their own words. Along with our partners, we drafted an annex to the complaint that described the European development banks’ exposure to the New Liberty mine and argued that for the banks’ novel “portfolio-wide approach” to financial intermediary lending to have meaning, it must also give affected communities access to the ICM complaint process.
In a groundbreaking decision, the ICM agreed, finding the complaint admissible as to DEG and Proparco. The ICM dismissed the complaint against FMO on technical grounds.
The ICM’s decision opened the door to a formal mediation process between the mining company and the affected communities, which the complainants hoped would be an opportunity to secure full and fair redress for all of the harms and losses they suffered, hold the company to its prior agreements with communities, and prevent future harm as the mine continues to expand.
Inclusive Development International also traced the gold from Liberia, discovering links to gold refineries and major U.S. brands. Company disclosures revealed that gold from the New Liberty mine was refined at MKS PAMP refinery in Switzerland. This refinery is subject to a number of standards requiring due diligence on human rights issues in the supply chain. These include the Responsible Gold Guidance of the London Bullion Market Association, to which members are required to adhere to in order to access the market. The PAMP refinery supplies gold to some of the largest brand names in the world, including Alphabet, Apple, Disney, Starbucks, and others. Many brands also disclosed that they may be sourcing gold from Liberia in conflict minerals reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Using this research, Inclusive Development International engaged with the London Bullion Market Association, MKS PAMP, and several retail and technology brands that ultimately source gold from New Liberty to urge them to use their leverage with the mining company encourage it to participate in good faith in the mediation process with the community.
In February 2023, the ICM published a Preliminary Review Report stating the willingness of both Bea Mountain Mining Corporation and the communities to participate in a Dispute Resolution Process, which included information sharing, fact-finding, dialogue and mediation. Ultimately, only two of the original five complainant communities participated in the mediation, which was facilitated by a neutral mediator. The mediation spanned several in-person sessions between the company and community representatives between 2024 and 2025, as well as independent expert studies and onsite information sharing and fact-finding. Inclusive Development International and Liberian partners accompanied the communities throughout the mediation process.
The ICM documented the results of the mediation, from its perspective and taking into account confidentiality rules, in its Conclusions Report, published in October 2025.
The most significant success of the mediation was relationship building and increased engagement between the parties, which was no small achievement under the circumstances. Reflecting on the mediation at its conclusion, community representatives told us that before the complaint process, the company did not even acknowledge that they existed, whereas after the mediation, the company was having agreed, monthly meetings in their communities.
As a result of the mediation, the two participating communities also benefited from independent expert fact finding regarding water and soil quality and the impacts of blasting on the buildings in their communities. Community representatives were also able to visit the underground mine, to learn more about how the mining operations worked and to help reassure them that the underground mining was not taking place underneath their villages.
The two communities also secured infrastructure improvements, including construction of a water tower in Jawejeh Marvoh and road repairs in Jenneh Brown to community members access a healthcare clinic, and some social benefits such as support to particularly vulnerable community members and priority recruitment for employment opportunities with the company.
Despite these successes, community members felt that several issues remain largely unaddressed. Affected communities have not been able to access all of the environmental and social impact assessments and water quality tests that they’ve requested, perpetuating concerns around transparency and mining impacts. Moreover, they remain disappointed that larger and more complicated concerns surrounding the mine’s impacts, such as far-reaching changes and negative impacts to traditional livelihoods, were not effectively addressed through mediation.
The case is an important example of the benefits and limitations of pursuing mediation as a strategy for seeking remedy for complex environmental and social harms. The affected communities secured several wins and expressed contentment about going through with the mediation process, despite not being fully satisfied with its outcomes. Power imbalances, lack of access to evidence, and the voluntary nature of the mediation process itself all contributed to a situation in which it was challenging for community representatives to achieve all of their goals.
Inclusive Development International continues to call upon MKS PAMP and the retail companies that source Liberian gold from the refinery to monitor the New Liberty mine and ensure that Avesoro Resources upholds its human rights responsibilities to the people impacted by its operations.
